[HN Gopher] One Million Screenshots
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       One Million Screenshots
        
       Author : gaws
       Score  : 77 points
       Date   : 2025-08-10 20:30 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (onemillionscreenshots.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (onemillionscreenshots.com)
        
       | LorenDB wrote:
       | Cloudflare Family DNS seems to be blocking this site.
        
       | dathery wrote:
       | This is a neat visualization. It makes me want to build something
       | like this with actual screenshots (scraping from places like old
       | forums, image hosting sites, etc.) rather than web page
       | renderings.
       | 
       | One of my most prized possessions is my collection of personal
       | screenshots -- I've managed to save basically every screenshot
       | I've taken over the past ~20 years. It's very nostalgic to put
       | them on shuffle and see how my desktop has changed over time,
       | remember what random thing I was working on, etc.
       | 
       | Could be cool to extend the concept beyond one user.
        
         | mockingloris wrote:
         | I screenshot all new sites I visit. A UI interaction catches my
         | attention, I screenshot. My files system is 60% images. It's an
         | habit.
         | 
         | As a self-taught software dev; it helped me hone good design
         | skills and also off topic - I poke around a lot when I visit
         | certain websites to see which technologies they are built with.
         | Maybe it was me testing js scripts or verifying the API/Object
         | properties of certain functions - the habit stuck haha.
         | 
         | Dey well
        
       | keysdev wrote:
       | Seems like a lot bootstrap like templat sites.
       | 
       | Not a lot melonking sites.
        
         | game_the0ry wrote:
         | Sometimes simple UI gets the job done well enough.
        
       | mariocesar wrote:
       | Every website looks so similar in design to one another that it
       | feels eerie
        
       | r33b33 wrote:
       | Meh... [big number] + [thing] meta seems overplayed by now
        
         | doctorhandshake wrote:
         | One of my art axioms: one thing is boring; one thousand of that
         | thing is an installation
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | axioms of large numbers. steal one person's money, go to
           | jail. steal a lot of people's money, you're a bank. or some
           | such.
        
           | mockingloris wrote:
           | Someone might use this in a Ted Talk!
           | 
           | My younger bro makes music, my older bro (a dev like me)
           | critiqued his new vocal track just this evening. I said it's
           | fire; he called it cliche. We exchanged looks, and my younger
           | bro quipped, "Perspective is all it's about." We laughed.
           | 
           | As they say, _One man's trash..._
           | 
           | Dey well
        
       | mariocesar wrote:
       | Clicking on the website to view the details appears to be broken
        
       | Unearned5161 wrote:
       | I like the ones that are greyed out because they have some
       | infernal popup about to appear
        
       | wewewedxfgdf wrote:
       | Why is this so fast
        
         | Zealotux wrote:
         | It's pretty clever optimization, it actually only shows a few
         | dozens images at all times and only update the groups as you
         | zoom in, for example
         | https://tiles.onemillionscreenshots.com/2024-05-01/tiles/-1/...
         | 
         | You don't even need something fancy like WebGPU/WebGL, just the
         | CSS transition property will do the job there.
        
         | pan69 wrote:
         | I assume that they are using some form of mipmapping, a
         | technique by which you have several images at different sizes
         | to represent different levels of detail. It is used a lot in 3D
         | environments.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mipmap
        
       | latchkey wrote:
       | I asked them to add my site and got spammed with some service
       | they offer.
        
       | hn-user-42 wrote:
       | zoomed out image looks interesting
       | 
       | https://i.postimg.cc/SK0CMnPt/ss.png
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | Something is weird with some of the gray areas where it'll say
         | "this screenshot appears broken", but I thought it was just my
         | machine. Your image looks very similar in the the broken in the
         | same pattern. So I guess it wasn't just my connection and
         | caching issues.
        
       | blendaddict wrote:
       | Wow, I'm impressed. This is a really cool tool to get some
       | inspiration as web dev. Although I have to say it's a bit scary
       | how similar all the websites look nowadays...
        
       | starchild3001 wrote:
       | Glad to see "dead internet theory" not holding up!
       | 
       | PS: As someone who worked on internet search, I can assure you
       | that at least half of most popular web pages change in about 6
       | months time. And the change is in no way something that can be
       | done by bots.
        
       | Fade_Dance wrote:
       | Very cool. Would be interesting for a more niche filter criteria,
       | since you aren't exactly finding many hidden gems in the top
       | million mostly corporate sites. Maybe AI could provide that
       | filter (top 1 million "niche" sites, or smaller sites that have
       | been around since the late 90s).
        
       | karpour wrote:
       | This really makes clear how boring web design has become. 99% of
       | websites use the same standard layout, there's almost nothing
       | distinct or exciting about any of the designs. I remember web
       | design being an art form, with books being printed with the best
       | designs... I'd visit brand websites just to look at the design
       | itself, even if I wasn't interested in what they were selling.
       | 
       | Of course not all is bad, but I'd love to see some creativity
       | again, it seems like almost no one dares to break the norm
       | anymore.
        
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       (page generated 2025-08-10 23:00 UTC)